


oh, wouldn't it be nice if we saw the world like you

by molotovhappyhour



Series: The Force Shall Free Me [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Gen, Implied Eren/Levi, always in trouble, enternally searching for some new trouble to be in, implied master/padawan relationship, jedi are heroes, levi is a jedi who stress knits, padawans getting into trouble, though it's also implied that it's currently one-sided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 23:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The more they keep getting into trouble, the more Jean realises it's always Eren's fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh, wouldn't it be nice if we saw the world like you

**Author's Note:**

> at least six standard months after "tattoo trouble to your knuckles" so they're like sixteen. i hope u like it

When Jean wakes up, his body screams in protest, his bound wrists tucked against his chest. The Force weaves its way across the backs of his eyelid in pools of slick colour and the strip of glow-tape on the ceiling splits it into bubbles when he opens his eyes. The taste of mildew sits heavy on his tongue and threatens to gag him, made even worse by the humidity of the room in which they sit.

“What the fuck,” he says and he _feels_ Eren rise up in the Force from wherever he’d been searching, like a krayt dragon getting ready to gobble up a hero. His eyes open and they’re bright and angry, the shadows where the glowstrip taped to the ceiling can’t quite reach curling around his cheekbones like a mask. “Dude, what the _fuck_. Are we arrested?”

The shadows fall away from his face when Eren smiles loosely, looking a little bit embarrassed but hardly surprised. “Uh, _arrested_ isn’t the word I’d use. Arrested implies authority and, uh. Hm. We’ve been taken _prisoner_. That’s a better word.”

A stone sits at the center of Jean’s chest and there’s a moment of absolute clarity where he realises _exactly_ why Grandmaster Smith doesn’t send Eren and Levi on stealth missions. Eren can’t sneak in fucking _anywhere_.

“Okay,” Jean clears his throat around the word so he doesn’t cough it up and stretches out with his senses. Everything around them is slimy like wayward fungus and when he stretches further the sensation doesn’t change. When Jean reaches up, however—when he reaches _up_ he can feel the burning effervescence of Coruscant, the city that’s too big to sleep.

So they're still on-planet then. Good news.

“Okay,” Jean repeats himself and looks toward the steel door that has them locked in. He remembers creeping through the alleys of the sublevels, remembers finding a seedy cantina, remembers the casual whispers of the slave trade and then—

“Someone tattled,” Eren says, just as Jean recalls the sharp _thwack_ that had felt just as suspicious and sharp as anything _else_ had down here, and so he hadn’t seen it coming. He’d slipped up. He needs to get better. “Someone saw Jedi wandering around and _tattled_.”

“What,” Jean folds his legs underneath him to stand, wobbling as the blood rushes to equilibrium, emphasizing the pounding at the back of his skull. “Did you feel them coming?”

When Eren rolls his shoulders his presence rolls in the Force, like water rolling over a beachhead. “Maybe.”

“And you didn’t fucking _tell_ me?”

Another shrug, another hiss of waves on sand. “We needed to get in. Now we’re in. And it’s not like Jedi are _inconspicuous_ , okay.” He pulls on his braid for emphasis, then gestures to their clothes—though their robes are gone and their lightsabers are missing. “We’re like a fucking _beacon_. What we are is so distinct, no one needs the Force to see us coming.”

“You just don’t specialise in stealth work.”

Eren blinks at him and it’s slow—and the dragon comparison comes back to mind. “Oh _please_ ,” and the dragon dies when Eren affects a higher voice, fluttering his eyelids. “Oh _please_ , Jedi Kirschtein, teach me the _wiles_ of subtlety and subterfuge. I find it _oh so interesting_.”

Jean makes a face and Eren’s good humour despite their circumstances drops on him like a fallen rock. “Fuck you, asshole. How are we going to get out?”

The third shrug and Jean thinks he might just punch him for the fun of it. “We wait. Here’s how it’s going to go. Slavers—especially Hutt slavers, if my guess is right—love to give monologues and hate wasting prizes. As Jedi, we’re _prizes_. They’re either gonna wanna freeze us into artwork or sell us off. Neither of these things are going to happen, but that’s where we stand. So chances are we’re going to be escorted into a conference with the head of the operation in a way that the CSF could only _dream_ of. Dude, we’ve got this shit _unlocked_.”

Jean slowly eases back to the floor and wonders how he got himself into this mess.

He _always_ gets himself into this mess.

( _“I need you to come with me_ ,” Eren will say.

And Jean will always go, _“why?”_

_“Because you usually say yes.”_

It must be nice to see the universe as either this _or_ that. It must be nice to be Eren Jaeger, where everything makes sense as long as you look at it the right way. Where Jedi are heroes and they do Good Things. Must be nice.)

“So are you our resident Hutt expert?”

Eren stretches out his legs, pulling himself out of the shadowed corner, though strings of darkness attempt to cling to his hair like spider-silk. “Nah. Levi’s the Hutt expert. But I’m pretty well-versed on shady dealings in the underworld, so.”

It’s something that Jean has never asked about, because it’s really not any of his business, but everyone knows about the running gag of Eren’s escapades before the Order and his legendary sticky fingers. And Jean knows very _personally_ his skills with stealing shit.

(The two of them still have no idea where one of Jean’s pairs of boots went. It’d started out as an eye-for-an-eye sort of thing. Eren had taken one of Jean’s belts for some slight—real or imagined, Jean won’t ever say— _while he was wearing it_. Jean had then taken one of Eren’s tunics.

And then— _somehow_ —they switched off a pair of Jean’s boots to the point where they just up and _disappeared_.

They have to be fucking somewhere, okay. He’ll find out eventually.)

“Right. So. We’re just _waiting_. For something to happen.”

Eren’s eyes narrow and his mouth twists into what should be a smile but doesn’t look quite right. “Yeah. That’s _literally_ the most Jedi thing we’ve ever done. _Wait_. Be passive. Commit to nothing, waffle on everything. Be general, not specific.”

These are the reprimands that both of them have gotten countless times, though Jean hasn’t been around for all of Eren’s lectures. There have been plenty of those that no one’s seen or heard about.

“Okay. Whatever.” Jean pauses and it feels like something greasy is moving against his skin. The sublevels are a disgusting place and everything tastes like forest rot and garbage. “You still should have warned me that I was going to get clocked on the back of the head.”

Eren shrugs. “You would have resisted.”

Jean’s eyes almost jump out of his skull when he rolls them and Eren’s amusement tickles the inside of his nose like pollen. “ _Whatever_ , okay, sure. Fine.”

Silence settles—though the Force is never silent, not on this planet and not with Eren next to him. The _pulse_ of the universe is a rumble of an earthquake, settling on the back of his tongue, the balance precarious and threatening to tip one way or the other at any time.

“So,” Eren says, because he can never shut his mouth, “I have a question.”

“What?”

(Something chills in his stomach, because they’ve been dancing around this for months. _So how’s Marco_ feels like it’s been stretched between them since he’d lost his arm.

It seems like everyone Jean’s close to these days is losing limbs.)

“Like—you know the phrase ‘what in the nine Corellian hells’?”

“Um,” and Jean tries to pluck the source of this conversation out of Eren’s mind and finds nothing. “Yeah?”

“Do you think that the nine hells only apply to Corellians? Like when they die. Like only a Corellian can go to the nine hells if they’re awful, but not, say, a Bothan, or a native of Coruscant. Or do you just have to believe in the Corellian religion? Because I’ve always wondered.”

Jean blinks and holds his breath—because _what?_ He doesn’t know if he’s relieved or not, wonders if he should be. “For one thing, okay, there’s only the Force after you die, so it doesn’t matter. Second, what the _balls_ makes you think I would know?”

Eren’s eyes glitter like a predator’s. It’s an odd contrast to his relaxed posture and to the cloud of indifference, electrified with excitement, that he sighs out into the Force around him, enough to smother people that come too close. “You’re the Grandmaster’s apprentice, dude. He’s Corellian.”

“He was _born_ on Corellia, but he was a Jedi orphan, okay? Fuck. I’ve never asked?”

“You should.”

“ _Why?_ You do it.”

Eren looks at him as though a second head as sprouted above the first and his eyebrows arch high, toward his hairline. “Do you even know how that conversation would go? Damn, son.”

“Just _ask_.”

“No.” His nose wrinkles and his eyes squeeze shut for half-a-heartbeat. “No, okay. Pretend to be me, and I’ll be Grandmaster Smith.”

“Why do I have to be _you_?”

Exasperation tastes like brine when Jean breathes it in. “Because it’s not _acting_ if I’m me. Go.”

Jean huffs and thinks the fungi is starting to make him dizzy, or maybe that’s the feeling of oil crawling up his legs. “Grandmaster Smith!” Jean raises his voice and pulls it into a falsetto, watching incredulity bleed onto Eren’s face, starting from his eyes.

“I don’t sound like that, fuckface.”

“I’m you, remember? This is how you sound to me.”

Eren places his palms together, though his wrists are bound in a way that might make that a little difficult, in the picture of serenity, after he rolls his eyes hard enough to spark a migraine at the back of Jean’s skull. “What can I do for you, Padawan?” The polished tone is almost accurate, but there’s still a tension in Eren’s hands that Erwin never shows.

“I have a question!”

“No, you can’t do whatever it is you want to do.”

“But I didn’t—that’s not my question!” Jean narrows his eyes at Eren’s face. “And Grandmaster Smith doesn’t talk like that. He _listens_.”

Eren’s eyebrows betray nothing, but the curve of his mouth does. “You’re asking better questions than me then. Keep going, asshole.”

“Since you’re Corellian and all, do you know if it’s _just_ Corellians that go to the nine hells, or does everyone?”

“Well, Padawan, it doesn’t really matter. This isn’t something that the Jedi dabble in. After death, we become one with the Force, part of the universal balance that we strive to protect.” When Eren shrugs, it looks like liquid, and Jean wonders how many times he’s seen that shrug fall from Erwin’s shoulders. “Now don’t you have some meditating you could be doing?”

“You could probably benefit from meditating some.” Eren’s eyes narrow and Jean clears his throat. “No, sir, I don’t, I’d much rather go and do illegal stuff while I’m on-planet since it’s a lot harder to get away with shit off-world.”

Eren laughs aloud and it sounds like a far away thunderstorm, a rain-dance come to fruition on a desert world, and Jean is so confused that it hurts to be this way. He doesn’t _like_ being out of the loop—it’s a fucking chore to get back in. “There you have it, folks. Padawan theatre!”

“You’re unbe-fucking-lievable.”

There’s more to that, Jean thinks, and he’d have had the perfect chance to articulate it except for the sound of military-grade locks disengaging from the door, hissing open to reveal two Gamorrean guards, drool leaking form the sides of their mouths and oozing from between their tusks.

“Our escorts are here,” Eren murmurs, and he stands in a perfect imitation of Levi, all the grace of a bounty hunter curled up in his knees—until he almost trips over his own ankles, breaking apart the image like thawing ice. Jean pushes himself up with his palms, dusting dirt from the seat of his pants, tucking his braid behind his ear.

“Jedi, with us.” The stilted Basic gets the point across, and Eren falls into step behind Jean—and he feels like an engine revving up, making his teeth want to chatter in his skull.

The corridor is, in fact, coated in a layer of black mildew and the air is thick and humid. A rancid tang flattens itself on Jean’s face, pulling at his teeth. Everyone _knows_ the air-scrubbers can’t quite get down here, but he’d never really thought about what that would mean.

Jean’s bootsteps are silent.

Eren’s are not.

The two of them and their Gamorrean escorts find their way into what appears to be a private entertainment room. The dimness does nothing to hide the loose presence of drunk patrons three doors away, almost obscured by the constant filth of the sublevels.

By Jean’s count, there are at least three other people with weapons in here, one of them a Rodian—and Jean _knows_ that Rodian.

Eren swears under his breath—because he knows him too.

“I fucking knew it,” Eren’s words are a hiss. “I _knew_ it. I fucking knew it was Hutts that were trafficking those Vors. Fucking told you, _and_ Master Levi and Grandmaster Smith, _and_ the CSF.”

“Then _why_ did we come alone?” Jean spits back. He doesn’t bother lowering his voice—he knows all the people present can hear them, knows the dark blob on the hoverchair with the amber eyes is just waiting for them to say something _important_ so they can be disposed of, no matter what Eren says about _prizes_. He may have never come face-to-face with a Hutt before, but he knows that there’s nothing redeemable about these slugs.

Eren’s voice, however, lowers further, and there’s something so warm about it—so _fluid_ —that it reminds Jean of cake batter. “This is a two row problem, not a six row problem.”

“Can you fucking—a _knitting metaphor_? Right now?” Jean glances over his shoulder to find Eren smiling at him, wide and angry, as they’re stopped in front of the large Hutt, its wheezing breaths one of the only sounds besides their conversation. “Seriously?”

“It’s not a _metaphor_. Levi really does have different stress-levels and you can _tell_ by how many rows he adds to, like, a blanket.” He snaps back to a volume that everyone can hear.

“I don’t pay that much attention because _I_ don’t wanna suck his dick.”

A serpent writhes between them when Jean says that. Eren goes so cold in the Force so fast, Jean’s nosehairs feel as if they’d been flash-frozen, and his lungs burn against the chill.

( _ah_ )

“Fucking _bite_ me, Jean.”

They’re quiet, then. Quiet enough anyway. The Hutt’s eyes flicker between them, reflecting even in the little light available. “Welcome, Jedi.”

Their words, in bubbled Basic, thick with the accent of the Hutts, hit the floor in wet smacks, like gelatin that has yet to fully harden, sticky and filled with powdered trash.

“We’re not Jedi,” Jean speaks when Eren won’t. “We’re just passing through.”

“You wear the braid of Jedi Padawans. And you carry the weapon of a Jedi.” The Hutt gestures with their stubby arms, practically useless for one this big. “And you still attempt to lie to me?”

“ _Jedi_ ,” Eren says quietly, and his voice rumbles with something dangerous, “and _Padawan_ are two different things. If you want to welcome people to you, you should probably get your titles right. For example, were we to entertain you at our humble home, we would say—“ Eren glances at him, and humour is trying to tug at his mouth.

( _so is he mad, or not?_ )

“—welcome _shitstain_ , I think,” Jean supplies, and Eren laughs aloud.

“Yeah! Sure. That’s good.”

Their eyes narrow to slits and blasters rattle in the grips of their owners. Jean can feel the pinpoints of each and every one, lining up on the both of them. But he can also feel both their lightsabers, tucked under the leaking folds of the Hutt in the hover chair.

“You’re _rude_ students, aren’t you?”

“A little,” Jean admits. “But, to be fair, we don’t deal in slaves, so I think we’re infinitely better than you.”

“Seconded,” Eren adds. “What do Hutts want with Vors, anyway? Like, they whistle. And they make music. Are you anti-music? Or was it because it wasn’t that jazz shit? Because, like, Bith are pretty good at that ‘waah-waah-waah’ stuff, but they’re not exactly _classical_ , if you know what I mean, and—“

“ _Silence_.” Despite the thickness of the word, Eren shuts his mouth, the message clearly received. “Sweet _gracious_ , humans talk too much.”

“And you _reek_ , but you don’t see us complaining.” Jean takes that, flinging it with his tongue, because Eren seems to have had the words pulled from his mouth, held in the tiny, useless fist of the Hutt-in-charge. “Seriously. Vors?”

“Do you want a villainous monologue, child-Jedi?” The Hutt blinks and their eyes disappear. The lackeys stay silent, but their blasters don’t drop. “Because the only story I have for you is that people _buy_ anything, regardless of _my_ lack of use for them.” When their eyes return, they glitter. "Such as Jedi, for instance."

Eren flickers in the Force beside him, a feather brushing against Jean’s face, and the _snap-hiss_ of a muffled lightsaber crackles through the room.

All at once the blasters fire and Jean ducks. Eren leaps up. One Gamorrean doesn’t expect his boots to their face and Jean sweeps the legs out from under the second, bouncing back up to break their nose with the heel of his boot.

The room is alive with blaster fire, though only two slavers remain standing—one of whom is the Rodian—as the Hutt wheezes themself to death, stabbed through by Eren’s lightsaber, tucked beneath its body. The stink of blood creeps down Jean’s throat, getting stuck on its way to curdle in his stomach.

Jean handles the Rodian and a female Faleen, finding a vibroblade tucked in her boot and maneuvering it to where he can cut the ties on his wrists. Eren, for his part, is working his arms beneath the dying Hutt, avoiding its stubby arms as he pulls their lightsabers from beneath it. His own—still on, the activation plate held down by his will in the Force—guts the Hutt with little fanfare.

They say nothing before they die.

The hilt of Jean’s lightsaber is covered in Hutt-slime and congealing blood but he clips it to his belt anyway.

“I fucking hate Hutts,” Eren says, his face cast in blue-relief until he thumbs his lightsaber off, clipping it to the belt of his tunic as well.

“Should you’ve—uh.” Jean eyes the corpse and tries not to gag. “Should you have killed them?”

Eren shrugs—and Jean notices that the Gamorrean that Eren had booted to the face is breathing, as is a male Twi’lek. Both of them flicker in the Force like candles.

“It was the sponsor of a slave trade. It’s not like the CSF would have done anything.” He wipes his hands on his pants, smearing goo along the fabric. “We saved the day. If we can find another storage room, my bet is we’ll find the next shipment, since the Hutt was still here, and so was our driver-friend the Rodian. Shit, it’s been months, too. You’d think they wouldn’t keep a failure on the payroll.”

( _We saved the day._ Sure, okay.

The Jedi are always the heroes—and they always do the Right Thing.

Jean wonders what it’s going to be like when people stop seeing the universe that way. When Eren stops seeing the universe that way.)

“Can we hurry please? I’d like to clean off my lightsaber before this Hutt-slime kills it. It’s fucking gross.”

“You sound like _Levi._ Cry me a fucking river. We’ll be quick and then you can steal another speeder and crash it on the way home.”

Eren’s smiling teeth catch the light before he palms open the sliding door, opening the bar to the both of them. Despite their appearance—despite the blood and the slime—the drinking doesn’t stop and they wander away, Eren stretching out into the Force to find their marks.

“I only _crashed_ it,” Jean says to his back, “to save _you_.”

“Whatever. You still crashed.”

“At least I can _fly_.”

(Neither of them talk about the reaming they’re going to get when they get back. If Jean tries, he can feel Eren’s terror murmuring a prayer at the back of his head—but it’s crushed beneath a tower of conviction so strong that it’s a wonder it doesn’t fall over, supported on a foundation so weak and small.)

“Yeah, that’s fair, but you also can’t _shut the fuck up_.”

“Hey, _I_ didn’t get the smackdowm from a Hutt about my chattiness, _Jaeger_.”

(“ _So_ ,” Grandmaster Smith will say later, while Eren looks at Levi’s boots, uncowed and jaw set, “ _you went out and caused more trouble, did you.”_

It turns out their escape was a little harder once they had to transport a load of Twi’leks and some malnourished Bothans. And it turns out that the CSF does, in fact, track _borrowed_ cargo speeders. Who knew?

“ _We always cause trouble,”_ Jean will supply, his hands still caked in Hutt-grime. Eren says nothing at all. In Levi’s hands there will be knitting needles. The two-row problem will be upgraded to twelve.

“ _Yes,_ ” Erwin will sigh the sigh of the put-upon professor. “ _It seems that way, doesn’t it?_ ”)


End file.
